Together with representatives from the Premier League Clubs, Live Tourism developed the Premier League VisitFootball Stadium Assessment Programme, which had the objective of assessing and improving all stadiums in the Premier League in terms of Fan Experience. VisitFootball has a small team of dedicated employees who visit the Premier League stadiums on a regular basis and give them a score (and in a later phase recommendations) based on the fan experience in their stadium.

Interview with Mandy Lane:

The assessment programme is calculated based on different parameters and starts way before the fans arrive at the stadium. The first step is actually “Pre-arrival”, which includes any type of contact that the fans might have with club-staff before they arrive at the stadium (ordering tickets, asking for information about parking, communication and information on matchdays...). An overview of all eight steps:

Pre-arrival

Arrival

Pre-match experience

Match Experience

Catering

Toilets

Post-Match

Club Shop

All the sub-categories are assigned a certain weighting to reflect how important they are to the fans and the total list of assessed factors is updated every year to reflect the fan’s changing demands. The stadium is assessed in from four different points-of-view to make sure the final score can account for the total experience of every fan. This includes home supporters, visiting supporters, disabled supporters and hospitality guest.

Once the final assessment has been made by the VisitFootball team, the club receives an individual report with an action plan and recommendations to improve the fan experience at their stadium. This would typically include some practical tips that are not too hard to integrate but can do a lot in terms of improving the fan experience. By using the assessment report and recommendations as a guideline, even the smaller and older stadiums the Premier League were able to offer their fans an increasingly better experience in the stadium over the past 7 years.

The cooperation between VisitFootball and the Premier League has meant an increase in the overall score for Fan Experience in Premier League stadiums from 65,75% in 2010-11 to 76,9% in 2017-18.